How to photograph fog

Fog shots fail grey: underexposed murk with nothing to look at. Two habits break at once. The meter breaks first: fog is a bright scene, and a meter that pulls everything toward middle grey drags it into gloom, so the exposure needs pushing back up toward bright. The seeing breaks second: fog strips edges and flattens tone, and the reflex repair, a contrast punch in post, destroys exactly what the picture is. The contrast lesson's fork applies with the sign flipped: here the flatness was captured on purpose, and the craft is composing depth into it (a dark, defined shape in the near plane, larger forms dissolving behind it, each plane a step lighter until the far ones vanish). Fog is also the screen that crepuscular rays are drawn on: a light beam is only visible where particulate hangs in the air, so when low sun breaks through trees, shoot toward the light with the source itself hidden behind a trunk or a building, and expose for the beam (rays only read against ground darker than they are).

Starting points

Exposure compensation: +2/3 to +1 1/3. The meter reads fog as grey; push it back toward bright and watch the right edge of the histogram.
Aperture: f/5.6–f/8. The picture is built from depth planes; keep the near shape defined.
ISO: Base where the shutter allows. Fog light is dimmer than it looks: mind the handheld shutter floor.
Focus: On the nearest defined subject, manually if autofocus hunts: fog gives it almost no edges to grab.
White balance: Decide, don't default: fog runs cool, and auto keeps re-deciding. Keep the blue as mood or warm it: deliberately.

In the field

Go at first light: fog is thickest and the light lowest around dawn, and it burns off without notice.
Place a dark, defined shape in the near plane; the dissolve only reads against something solid.
Expose above the meter's reading and confirm on the histogram, not the screen.
Work fast when sun breaks through: beams and clearings last minutes.
Re-check exposure as the density shifts; fog does not hold one brightness for long.

When it fails

Grey murk with no subject: Nothing anchors the frame. Fog cannot carry a picture alone: it needs a near, dark, defined form (a tree, a figure, a fence line) for the depth gradient to be read against. Move until one enters the frame.
Everything underexposed and heavy: The meter did what meters do with bright scenes: pulled it to grey. Add positive compensation until the histogram sits right of center without clipping: fog should read luminous, not dim.
The edit ruins the mood: A global contrast move punches through the depth gradient and turns atmosphere into haze with artifacts. Leave global contrast nearly untouched and work locally and gently: the flatness is the subject, not the flaw.

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